According to Robert Fishman,  an author and professor of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Alexis de Tocqueville might have been the first to recognize the special character of American planning in his classic Democracy in America. "When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he observed that the country lacked the top-down government bureaucracies that carried out planning in France, and yet, in the United States, much more was actually accomplished because the relatively open American system encouraged citizen activism and cooperation. ‘Democracy,' he wrote, ‘does not give the people the most skillful government, but it produces what the most able governments are frequently unable to create: a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, however unfavorable circumstances may be, produce wonders.' "

The Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Area Rapid Transit system are among the Northern California transportation wonders made possible by planning and cooperation. But over time, state and regional challenges have grown in complexity; many issues cannot be resolved within a single region. "As the population of Northern California continues to grow, challenges in housing, land use, jobs, transportation, and the environment have crossed regional boundaries and are linking cities, counties, and regions together across wider geographies. These issues make planning at a megaregional scale increasingly necessary to achieve a broader footprint of economic prosperity and for California to reach its carbon reduction goals," noted the Bay Area Council Economic Institute in a 2016 report, Northern California Megaregion: Innovative, Connected, and Growing.

"There are urgent environmental and economic imperatives to plan for future population and job increases in a manner that does not stop at regional borders but extends across the megaregion. Broadening the job base and creating a more efficient transportation and goods movement network are necessary for the state and the Northern California Megaregion to reach greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets under the Sustainable Communities Act."

Megaregion Working Group Sets Priorities

Several years after that report, the members of a cross-regional transportation group called the Megaregion Working Group decided to become more active in advocating for cross-regional projects. The group consists of board members and commissioners of Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which is is the transportation planning, financing, and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area; San Joaquin Council of Governments (SJCOG), a joint-powers authority comprised of the County of San Joaquin and the cities of Stockton, Lodi, Manteca, Tracy, Ripon, Escalon, and Lathrop; and Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), which is  the Metropolitan Planning Organization for the Sacramento region. Together, these three agencies encompass 16 counties, 136 cities, and a population of nearly 11 million.

In September of last year, the Megaregion Working Group agencies pledged to work together on the most important interregional transportation projects. Dubbed the Megaregion Dozen, this list of 12 transportation improvement projects will benefit quality of life, transportation, and commerce throughout Northern California, according to officials. Each agency agreed to cooperate to find support and funding for the  Megaregion Dozen projects. The list includes highway improvements, passenger rail expansions, a new truck scale facility, and electric truck charging infrastructure.
 
"The Megaregion Dozen are a package of projects that guide and advance the transportation principles and strategies that this working group approved," according to SJCOG Executive Director Diane Nguyen. "And those framing principles — of interregional functionality, policy alignment, persuasive leverage and strategic investment — helped the executive directors of MTC, SJCOG, and SACOG narrow down to four projects from each agency that we felt advanced those core principles."

"All three of our regions have realized — and particularly over the past year — how the intersecting issues of transportation, housing, climate and the environment, and the economy all really filter down and impact the success of delivering infrastructure that will be to the benefit of our collective residents," according to MTC Executive Director Therese McMillan.

Valley Link Top Priority

At a March 2021 meeting, the Megaregion Working Group identified freight and interregional passenger rail as two of the important areas for shaping a megaregion transportation investment strategy and making the Valley Link project an obvious choice for inclusion in the Megaregion Dozen. When completed, Valley Link will close a critical transit gap. By connecting the BART system at the Dublin/Pleasanton station in Hacienda to the state rail system at Lathrop in the San Joaquin Valley, it will link "nearly 500 miles of commuter and intercity rail with more than 130 stations throughout the Northern California Megaregion," according to the Tri-Valley – San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority, which oversees the project.

The feasibility study for Valley Link was completed in 2019. Thus far $750 million of the $1.8 billion needed for funding has been identified. If the necessary funding is found, a final design is expected to be approved as early as 2025, with construction slated to run from 2025 and 2027. It is an important project for a variety of reasons, according to Kevin Sheridan, Executive Director of Tri-Valley – San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority.

"If you can't widen the highway anymore and there's more emphasis on trucks and goods movement, the only way you can create capacity on any highway is to take more commuters off the road," he says. His agency expects Valley Link to take 30,000 cars off the road, reducing congestion and improving air quality for Tri-Valley and other residents. "We are looking to start up Valley Link with zero-emission technology. When we take those thirty-thousand vehicles off the roadway, we're essentially removing those greenhouse gas emissions."

Traffic patterns are not complex, according to Sheridan; it is regional planning efforts that tend to be complex. "The Megaregion Working Group has been fantastic," he says, and notes that it is critical for the three agencies to follow through on the work done by their representatives in the group. Bay Area Council CEO Jim Wunderman, who supports the concepts represented by the Megaregion Dozen projects, also agrees with the priorities established by the group. "I think the project list, the Megaregion Dozen, is a really good list."

For more information about the Megaregion Working Group, please visit www.sjcog.org/554/Megaregion-Working-Group.

For more information about the Valley Link project, please visit www.valleylinkrail.com.

Fore more information about Metropolitan Transportation Commission, please visit mtc.ca.gov.

For more information about San Joaquin Council of Governments, please visit www.sjcog.org.

For more information about Sacramento Area Council of Governments, please visit www.sacog.org.